


little boy blue (and the man in mexico)

by amandaskankovich



Category: Shameless (US)
Genre: Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-06
Updated: 2018-01-06
Packaged: 2019-03-01 00:49:36
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,733
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13283406
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/amandaskankovich/pseuds/amandaskankovich
Summary: Dear asshole who is my dad. No one is looking for you. People think you’re dead. I’m not fbi. This is not a lie. Come see me in real life. You owe me I think. Or I guess you’re just an asshole I guess.Your only son probably.Yevgeny





	little boy blue (and the man in mexico)

Mickey ends the call. Closes his eyes. And relives the whole thing in his head.

_Dear asshole who’s probably my dad I guess._

Svetlana had asked him a couple of times if she wanted her to send him any pictures. But he’d always said no. Until two weeks ago when he’d said yes.

_It’s been 10 years no one’s looking for you except for me._

The letter had been mailed to Mateo’s mother’s house which is the address he’d given Svetlana when she asked where to send them. What was inside were multiple pictures ranging in age over the years and frankly he’d found the shit…overwhelming. Passive aggressive almost. He’d felt his chest get tighter and tighter at the image of the two year old he saw so clearly when he closed his eyes turning 3, 4, 5, 6, 7,8, 9, 10, 11. Packaged neatly one on top of the other. All of them birthday pictures too like what the fuck was she trying to do to him? She might as well have stood beside him blasting that fucking cat’s in the cradle song at him. “Fuck bitch…,” He’d said out loud to no one, “I fucking know, okay?”

But then there it was the last picture: 12. The age his kid was now and the kid looked…like him but…not so much. Bonier? Or sharper angled and his hair was long and falling into his face and he was wearing this faded tye dyed shirt, like…Mickey didn’t know a hippie? Was the kid a hippie?

Yevgeny looked at him through the still image and Mickey fought the urge to brush hair out of the boy’s eyes.

Then he noticed it. In sharpie on the bottom of the picture was a black arrow pointing. Mickey turned it around.

_Dear asshole who is my dad. No one is looking for you. People think you’re dead. I’m not fbi. This is not a lie. Come see me in real life. You owe me I think. Or I guess you’re just an asshole I guess._

_Your only son probably._

_Yevgeny_

_PS: Unless you have mexican kids now. Do I have a mexican brother or sister? I know you’re gay but you made me with my mom and if you’re lonely I guess I would understand if you made a replacement for me. Do not bring my replacement brother or sister with you if you visit. It’s my visit and about me not them._

_Bye for real now._

_Yevgeny_

*

Mateo says, “Of course I think it’s a fucking bad idea. Are you serious? Are you joking? Why can’t she bring him down here? No one is looking for her!”

A few days earlier he’d called her and they’d talked.

“Do you want me to bring him down there?” She asked, “ I could close the bar for the day. It would be a nice vacation.”

“He asked me to come to him.”

“He asks for a lot of things. Every other week there’s some new video game or shit.”

He could tell over the phone she was smoking. He heard her inhale then exhale.

“You want a built in exit. We come down there and we can stay for however long. You come down here and it’s like, “Okay sonny boy I only have two hours before the cops are on my tail. So better not get too mad at me abandoning you. We only have so much time for this nice little reunion.”

“Yeah,” Mickey felt there was no point in tip toeing around it, “I have no idea what the fuck to say to him.”

Svetlana said, “He doesn’t hate you if you’re scared of that. You have to know someone to really hate them. He thinks the story’s exciting. He’s going to be using it to get laid in college I think.”

They were both quiet and then she asked, “What does he think?”

By “he” she meant Mateo.

“He doesn’t like the idea of me taking an unnecessary risk.”

“Even if it’s to meet your son?” Svetlana asked, “Some man.”

Mickey’s face grew hot, “You don’t know him. And he’s right. It would be a risk.”

“So don’t see him then,” Svetlana’s silk voice grew an edge, “He’s lived 12 years without you. He’ll go on living without you.”

“Don’t be a bitch,” Mickey said, “It’s not like I don’t want to see him I just don’t know how to fucking begin.”

“Mexico sounds nice. I’d like to go to a nice resort with him, not whatever shit hole you’re staying in.”

“I live in a fucking house Svetlana. Like a person.” He replied.

“I sunbathe a little bit. Yev can go snorkeling. It would be nice. He’s a very good swimmer.” She’s planning it all out loud to herself, seeing it, and painting a picture for him.

“I think he’d like it here,” Mickey said, “Is anyone looking for me?” He got quiet for a minute than asked.

“Honestly?” She replied, “I don’t know. A lot of people do think you died. There was some report a couple of years back about some guy who escaped from the same prison as you hiding out in the woods for a couple of years and dieing of a meth overdose. They released the name but a lot of people still think that was you.”

“Oh shit, great,” Mickey replied.

“I don’t know I honestly don’t. The cops stopped asking questions years ago but if some dumbass sees you and recognizes you and talks. I can’t tell you it’s not a risk. And you do have a life down there. You don’t need to blow it up to prove you love him. Even if the idea seems romantic to you.”

Mateo had said something similar but Mickey decides not to mention that.

“We could come down there in a few weeks. Stay for a weekend. People do that. No one’s watching me.”

“What would I even say to him?”

“You start with hello and you fucking wing it from there but if it helps he doesn’t talk much these days just plays with his fucking phone all day.”

Mickey smiles at that until Svetlana says the next thing he knows immediately she didn’t mean to say, “I told Ian not to get him that fucking thing.”

*

“Fuck,” She said at the same time he said, “What!?”

“Ian…Ian fucking who?”

Look,” She began, “It’s not–”

“Ian fucking Gallagher?”

“Okay, look,” She continued.

He interrupted again, “Is buying…our kid… cell phones?”

“One cellphone,” She said, “one time.”

“Oh thank you for clarifying!” He said, “What the fuck is going on?”

“Christ,” She sighed and then exhaled and then began, “Look. He does things with Yevgeny sometimes. Takes him to movies and shit.”

“Buys him phones.”

“Bought him a phone yes, one time.”

“Since when…”

“Since a year or two after you left. We started talking again. The bar wasn’t doing so great. Kevin and Veronica were dragging me to court. I was alone I needed a babysitter. He…fucking offered.”

“You trusted him…after everything…”

“Well,” Svetlana said, “He got his shit together. And I had limited options.”

“I don’t…I don’t wanna hear anything else.”

“Mickey…”

“I just don’t.”

He didn’t know why this scared him. He just knew that it did. You build a room inside your head and you put the biggest thing about your life you can’t look at inside it and you walk around that room.

Ad then one day you find out that thing inside that room is going to movies with your kid.

Fuck it. It’s too much. He’s not going to think about it.

“What doe Ian even get out of…” He starts to ask and then he says, “No. Never mind. Just…bring him down here.”

“You’re…sure?” Svetlana asked.

“He’s my fucking kid, yeah I’m sure.”

*

Two weeks later Mickey walks into the moderately priced resort. He sees a woman and her son sitting at a table. The woman is drinking some kind of cocktail. The boy is sipping a can of coke through a straw. Tourist kids run around the pool area screaming. No one looks at him.

Mickey keeps looking at his son. But he can’t make himself walk towards him.

He thinks if he stares long enough Svetlana will turn around. But the boy looks up first instead.

Mickey doesn’t dream about any of the people he misses anymore. Instead sometimes he has elaborate daydreams of them. He imagines Mandy in her 30’s now too with those nieces he’s never going to meet. He sees a flash of red hair and he closes his eyes so tight he gets sick with a feeling like a missing limb.

He sees a boy any boy vaguely his son’s age and he reminds himself it can’t be his son until this time and maybe only this time yes this is happening and yes this is his son. The boy looks at him. His mother sees him looking at him. Mickey still can’t make himself move. The boy shirtless in a bathing suit and barefoot walks over to him. He’s been swimming very recently. His skin is wet and he leaves footprints on the path from the dining patio to the pool that seem to evaporate and disappear as quickly as he makes them and the sun is so hot the air shimmers and Mickey has to tell himself over and over this is real. This is real.

“Do you want me to come with you?” Mateo had asked. And he’d said no because he couldn’t have a buffer between him and this child his child he couldn’t. To be fair he couldn’t. For what Yevgeny was owed he couldn’t. But he needed someone here to hold his hand. To let him know this was really happening. He needed that.

And then there was Yevgeny standing right in front of him. Looking right at him and Mickey knew this was happening. He knew this was so fucking real. And Yevgeny looked. He looked like a nervous kid meeting someone he’d wanted to meet his entire fucking life for the first time.

“Hi,” He said, “I’m Yevgeny.”

And Mickey reached out his hand and he brushed the hair away that had been clinging to his son’s forehead, obscuring his eyes.

“I know,” Mickey said.


End file.
